Starting from October 1, 2017, a private retirement savings system will be launched in Georgia as part of a broader pension reform. This reform has been discussed by Nino Doghonadze and Yaroslava Babych in Decent Income in Old Age: Georgian Dream or Reality? on the ISET Economist. Today we will focus only on one very interesting aspect of the reform – the “opt-out” principle and its implementation in the Georgian realities.
WHAT’S IN THE “OPT-OUT”?
The proposed private retirement savings system is based on the “opt-out” principle, according to which...

WHEN SUCCESS SPEAKS TOO LOUDLY
In November 2015, the National Audit Office of the UK has published a report saying: “The Department for Work and Pensions has successfully introduced automatic enrolment to workplace pensions for large and medium-sized employers.” The National Audit Office found that 58,000 employers have enrolled 5.4 million workers between October 2012 and August 2015. The huge increase in enrolment was due to a small policy change introduced by the UK government in October 2012. The Government switched the default option from one i...

On the first of January, Armenia will adopt an entirely new pension system. This radical reform addresses two problems: widespread poverty among the elderly and a lack of capital in the economy. The very same problems also exist in Georgia, where the standard governmental pension currently is 150 lari, and where the economy is suffering from high capital costs due to notoriously low saving rates. So, it is worthwhile to have a look at what is going on in our neighboring country Armenia. Georgian decision makers may learn important lessons from their expe...

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